


digging up the grave another time

by ihopethatyouburn



Category: Homeland
Genre: Berlin-to-NYC transition, F/M, Post-Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27831073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihopethatyouburn/pseuds/ihopethatyouburn
Summary: "You can be late, and it isn’t life or death, and you don’t have to check for threats in the bowels of this crumbling train station. That isn't your job anymore."Back in the States, Carrie processes the near-attack in Berlin and plots her next move, with Otto at her side.
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Otto Düring
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	digging up the grave another time

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the scene in 6.01 where Otto eviscerates Carrie: "You think you're better off alone. You think your sins require it, but they don't."
> 
> The title is a lyric from the 1 by Taylor Swift. 
> 
> Thanks for reading as always!

You’re running through an unfamiliar train station, sprinting actually, trying to remember the advice your high school track coach gave you about using your arms to help you move faster, which you always pretended to understand but never quite did, and now the advice has failed you when it might actually matter. You’re skidding around random would-be passengers who are staring at train schedules with an alarming amount of patience, who don’t seem to realize that you have somewhere to _be,_ not just that you’re going to miss your train but that people’s lives hang in the balance.

On another day, you might think wistfully about what it would be like to look at timetables in a busy train station with no thought other than getting a good seat, because you always feel on edge in overly-crowded public places, unable to stop your brain from doing calculations about the likelihood of an attack and the nearest exit. But right now, you can feel the stretch in your quads as you press onwards towards your destination clear across the station, the afternoon light streaming in through the windows seeming to mock you with impunity.

You thought you knew which platform you needed to get to, but you’re dodging between Berliners who don’t even turn around to acknowledge your presence, to laugh at your urgency, to judge you for your lack of forethought, and you stumble a little on the perfectly smooth floor. You try to see over the heads of the crowd in front of you, but it’s useless because you’re not tall enough to see over anybody’s head, and every hallway you might turn down looks identical, down to the signs for restrooms and ticket booths. 

“Excuse me!” you shout to a man walking by, too harried to come up with the appropriate German, “I’m lost, can you help me?”

He sails by you without even a second glance, without registering that he’s heard you at all. Your voice catches in your throat, even though you want to tell him off for his lack of concern, every cell in your American body telling you that he should be scolded for his rudeness, but you can’t find the breath to yell. You’ve wasted all your energy running, and you don’t even know where you’re supposed to be. 

You reach into your bag for your phone, but you can’t find it, and you have a vague memory of giving it away. You’re not sure when or why, but you know it was important at the time, as so many things are. 

“Excuse me,” you call again, this time out into the crowd that surrounds you on all sides, that you can’t seem to find a way out of no matter how many bodies you dodge around. No one stops for you, and the crowd seems to press in closer just as you decide to stop to catch your breath, gasping for air that seems to grow thinner as you struggle to swallow your fear that you’re missing something. You’re missing something, and you’re the only one who knows it, but you’re stuck in a crush of disinterested train passengers, and you’re never going to figure it out in time. You’re too late, as always: you tried your best, but you can’t save everyone, no matter how fast you run.

+++++

“Carrie?” Otto asks, voice tight, as he shakes her out of a fitful sleep. “Are you okay?”

Carrie groans to show that she’s awake, but she has to take a few extra seconds to remind herself where she is. She’s not in Berlin anymore, she’s back in DC, in her sublet apartment that Otto Düring insisted on paying for. He’s lying next to her in the king-size bed, and her daughter is sleeping soundly down the hall. 

Carrie resisted Otto’s advances at first, too close on the heels of her breakup with Jonas, but once they arrived in DC — she to reunite with Franny, he to take business meetings and probably to keep an eye on her — they fell into each other more easily than she’d expected. She didn’t agonize over the decision, because to her it was simple: she was lonely, he was no longer her boss, and he was clearly interested. It would have been silly, really, to turn down sex that was right in front of her. So he stays over sometimes, when she asks him to, and he seems happy, even though she’s not his full-time partner like he wants.

“Yeah,” she nods. “Another bad dream.”

“Were you in the train station again?” He rubs her back slowly.

“Yeah,” she repeats. “It’s always the same. No one can hear me, and I can’t run fast enough.” 

“You’re safe here. You don’t have to worry.”

She half-snorts at his reassurances — how lovely it would be to just stop worrying altogether — and tosses the covers off of herself. “I need to go check on Franny.”

“She’s been sleeping for hours,” Otto tries to soothe her. “Everything’s fine.”

Carrie ignores him as she shuffles to the room next door. She’s been extra paranoid since she and Otto landed in the States a few weeks ago, rarely letting Franny out of her sight, sure that she would turn her back for a second and return to find her daughter fighting for her life.

In Franny’s room, she smiles at her peaceful sleeping face, aglow from the combo night light/noise machine she brought along from Maggie’s house. She wants to climb into bed with Franny, like she did the whole first week they were back together, but Maggie has been a stickler about boundaries. About keeping Franny’s life as consistent as possible, so she doesn’t know her mother still spends her every waking hour scared out of her mind. 

Carrie settles for a soft kiss on Franny’s forehead and forces herself to get back in her own bed.

“Is she all right?” Otto mumbles as she settles back under the comforter. 

“She’s perfect,” Carrie answers, swallowing the guilt that’s constantly on her tongue, the paranoia that nothing will ever be all right again. 

“Good. Now go to sleep.”

+++++

Otto flew Carrie from Berlin to DC on his private plane the minute she was ready to go see Franny, unfailingly generous even with his unanswered romantic proposal hanging open over their heads. She called Maggie on the way to the airfield just outside of Berlin, too excited to admit that she couldn’t answer most of her sister’s sensible questions about how long she’d be back in DC and if she needed a place to stay. 

She took a cab directly to Maggie’s house, ringing the bell and knocking on the front door at the same time in her eagerness. She heard Franny before she saw her, little feet scampering through the living room on their way to the door, and her voice shouting “Mama?”

Maggie unlocked the door and Franny burst out onto the front porch and into Carrie’s arms. 

“Hi,” Carrie whispered into Franny’s hair as she sank onto the floor of the porch with her daughter in her lap, too happy to make it inside. “I’m here. I missed you so much.”

She laughed in happy disbelief when she made eye contact with Maggie, who was standing on the welcome mat with a huge grin on her face and tears in her eyes.

“Welcome home,” Maggie said. DC didn’t feel like home anymore, more like a stop on the way to something new, but Carrie stood up eventually to greet her sister, a one-armed hug with Franny on her other hip. 

“It’s good to be back,” Carrie answered, the easiest response she could come up with. 

They headed into the house and Franny wouldn’t leave her side, actually holding onto her leg as they walked into the living room, and Carrie couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be. She knew that was a line people threw out about their families, as a way of virtue signaling, but she meant it, in a way she never would have before Berlin.

“Where’s Jonas?” Franny asked, standing up in Carrie’s lap as she tried to check the entryway for one more person to join them.

“He’s not coming, honey.” Carrie tried to get Franny to sit back down. “He stayed in Germany.”

“He’s never coming?”

Carrie sighed. “No. He has his whole life in Berlin, and his job.”

“Oh.” Luckily, Franny seemed appeased for the moment, but that might not last.

Maggie tilted her head quizzically at Carrie, her next question clear before she opened her mouth, pausing to think of a coded question that won’t upset Franny. 

“Did you two—?”

Carrie nodded so she didn’t have to hear how Maggie wanted to finish her sentence. At least for the time being she could preserve the illusion that their breakup was mutual. “We’ll talk about it later.” 

When Franny finally went down for a nap that was hours overdue from the excitement of Carrie’s arrival, the sisters got a chance to talk more.

“I’m sorry to hear about you and Jonas,” Maggie said as she led Carrie into the kitchen to find food, pulling out cheese and crackers and berries and laying everything on the kitchen island.

“Me too.” Carrie tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I know you thought he was a great guy.” 

“I thought you two were happy together, that’s all.”

“He wasn’t so happy, as it turned out.”

Maggie shook her head. “The last time we were all on Skype together, he was telling me about your plans for Franny’s birthday party. Everything seemed… well, perfect.” 

Carried almost laughed. 

“I’m just surprised that everything fell apart so fast for you guys,” Maggie continued. 

“He wanted out, okay? I don’t… I’m not ready to say more about it yet.”

“That’s fine,” Maggie said gently.

“And you can’t keep talking to him on Facebook,” Carrie warned. “That’s off-limits now.” 

Jonas and Maggie occasionally caught up with each other online and shared updates about the girls. Carrie found their effort both annoying and endearing in equal parts, not wanting to feel like an inferior parent for refusing to make her own Facebook account.

“I can’t stop him from commenting on things I post.”

“Can’t you stop him from seeing your page altogether?” The details of how Facebook worked remained a mystery to Carrie, but she was pretty sure about this part.

“Sometimes I post pictures of the kids. He likes to see what Franny’s up to here with us,” Maggie defended herself. “I don’t want to take that away from him.”

Carrie sighed heavily. Despite the callous way their relationship ended, she didn’t want to stop Jonas from getting updates about Franny, even if Facebook was a confusing waste of time to her. “Fine. But you can’t talk to him about me, only about Franny.” 

“That’s fair,” Maggie said, sounding dissatisfied. She clearly had more questions, but she didn’t ask any of them.

In silence, Carrie took the blackberries over to the sink to rinse them.

“It was very nice of Otto to let you use his plane,” Maggie said finally, leaning on the absurdity of anyone having a personal plane to lend out in the first place.

“It was,” Carrie agreed. “But he came with me, so it wasn’t just a favor to me.”

“He came with you?” Maggie’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

“You know. He just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“I actually don’t know, since I don’t know any other billionaires. But I don’t think they usually fly across the Atlantic to reunite their employees with their daughters.”

“He has meetings in the area coming up, so he’s not just here for me.” Carrie kept her face carefully blank, but it wasn’t enough to hide anything from her sister. 

“Right. He has some meetings. How convenient.”

“I’m not lying!”

“I don’t think you are. But it’s also very clear that your boss is in love with you.”

“Why don’t we focus on someone other than me?” Carrie said abruptly. 

“Uh, sure, if you want.” Maggie narrowed her eyes, letting Carrie know they would have to come back to Otto at some point.

“I really can’t thank you enough for taking care of Franny.” 

“We were happy to do it,” Maggie said. “She and Josie got really close.”

“I know you already have your hands full getting everyone organized to leave for Rome.”

“Yeah, well, you know how it goes.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Bill said he would be in charge of everyone’s paperwork, and putting stuff in storage, but he’s been busy and absentminded.”

“And he knows you’ll pick up the slack.” 

Carrie grabbed onto Maggie’s complaints gratefully, happy to have a harmless topic of conversation, peppering in her own advice about European outlet converters and what they should buy new in Italy instead of shipping over there. 

“I missed you,” she said as she finished off the carton of blackberries. “I felt so far away in Berlin.”

“Thanks for telling me that as we’re packing for Rome,” Maggie huffed. 

“That’s temporary, though. It’s just a few months.” 

“So does that mean you’re back for good?”

“I don’t know. I might not be back in DC. But I’m staying in the States.”

“Good,” Maggie smiled. “We missed you too.”

+++++

Carrie’s all-consuming relief at seeing Franny and Maggie again doesn’t last long as she has to focus on the reality in front of her, like the fact that she’s unemployed. The weeks pass slowly as she readjusts to American life and starts a halfhearted, unfocused job search, in a heavy haze of indifference. 

Maggie asks her if she’s taking her meds, and she is, of course. But her normal dosage isn’t strong enough to account for her latest run-in with jihadists in Hauptbahnhof, one of her closest friends in rehab after a sarin gas attack and a weeks-long coma, and the breakup of the one happy, stable relationship she’s ever had. She would usually work straight through her guilt and sadness, but she doesn’t have a job, and the guilt and sadness are making it harder for her to decide what her next professional step should be. It’s a vicious cycle, and she needs to go to her psychiatrist, but she can’t summon the energy to explain everything to this woman who barely knows her.

Being around Franny helps, and being around Otto helps, more than she thought he would. It’s the newness of it all more than anything else, the thrill that standing naked in the bathroom could be an invitation, instead of an ordinary Monday morning before work. On her darkest days, she tucks that knowledge away as proof that she’s not made for relationships, that she’ll always crave something more dangerous, that she and Jonas would have fallen apart anyway sooner or later. It’s a compulsion for her, picking apart the tiny flaws in her relationship and coming to the inevitable conclusion that their breakup was her fault. 

One sunny afternoon, Otto comes to see Carrie and finds her sitting on the couch, her computer opened and abandoned in front of her. 

“Hey,” she greets him, trying to muster happiness at his arrival. “How did your meetings go?” 

“They went well.” Otto sits down next to her and pulls her feet onto his lap. “I met with a very promising young lawyer who works for the ACLU, arguing asylum cases for families from Honduras and Guatemala.”

“And what does he want from you?”

“He wants funding to start his own legal aid practice. Similar to what he’s doing now, but more focused.” 

“Hm. Sounds like a great idea.” 

She wants to be more excited, she really does, but she’s been so tired the past few days. The past couple weeks, really. Sometimes she’ll take a nap after she drops Franny off at preschool, glad that Maggie found somewhere that goes all day instead of just the mornings. Running hasn’t helped energize her either; her feet feel so heavy that she has to stop after only a mile or two, like she has weights strapped to her ankles that she can’t take off. It’s just been a bad few weeks, that’s all, and not having anywhere to be has made everything worse. 

She knows that she could find a nonprofit job easily if she wanted, and she always has Saul’s CIA offer in her back pocket, but for the first time she can remember, she feels paralyzed by choice. Every time Otto or Maggie or anyone else asks her what her next step is, she doesn’t have a clear answer. But she needs to come up with something quickly; after she admits that she’s still exploring her options, active yet vague, the other person always responds with some bullshit about how whatever organization she picks being lucky to have her, that she’ll change so many lives, help so many people, every kind of overkill imaginable. And it just makes her feel more frozen.

“I told him that I knew someone who might be interested in working with him. To get your name out there.”

“You told him what? I never said you could do that,” Carrie says sharply.

“Well,” Otto falters, “I know you’re not sure what you want to do next, so I wanted to help you out.”

“I don’t need you talking me up to people I’ve never met. You’re going to ruin —” She takes a breath. “I just don’t need it.”

“Okay, I won’t say anything next time.” He’s hesitant, and he wasn’t expecting her anger, but she can’t stand the thought of anyone setting expectations for her that are impossible to meet. 

She used to welcome when Saul marveled at her mania-fueled work ethic, anything to set herself apart, but she’s built herself a legacy that’s going to crush her someday soon if she’s not careful.

Carrie is quiet for the rest of the afternoon, pretending to do work on her laptop to avoid a long conversation. Otto orders from her favorite Thai restaurant for dinner as a peace offering, with chicken and rice for Franny, eating with her before going into Carrie’s office to make calls about that day’s meetings. 

“So do you want to tell me what that was about this afternoon?” Otto asks as they’re getting ready for bed. He’d asked earlier if she wanted him to leave, but she couldn’t stomach turning this into a real fight by saying yes. “Why did you get so upset?” 

Carrie sighs. “I just didn’t want you to over-promise anything to a stranger.” 

“That’s not what happened. If anything, he was the one making outlandish promises to me because he wanted my money.” 

“I know. But you always — I feel so exposed when you talk about me like that.”

“You mean because we’re seeing each other? You think people will find out?” 

“No.” Carrie swats the idea away with her hand. “I don’t worry about that.”

“It would be understandable if you did worry about it,” Otto reminds her. The subtext being, she thinks, _A normal person would be worried._

“It’s not that. It just seems like you’re setting expectations too high around what I can accomplish.”

“But I’ve seen you accomplish great things in the years we’ve worked together. I’ve never seen you tackle a problem you can’t solve.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Carrie almost yells. “I’m not perfect at anything. Remember when you almost got killed in Lebanon?”

“Vividly. But I’m still here because you protected me. And you stopped that sarin attack on Hauptbahnhof right before it happened.” 

“You’re giving me too much credit!” 

“I can’t say I’ve seen many people get upset because they’ve been praised too much,” Otto says dryly.

“It’s not — you wouldn’t get it.” 

“Try to explain it to me.”

“I had to shoot at those men who were seconds away from killing everyone on the platform! I had to jump out of the way of a moving train! That isn’t a fulfilling accomplishment I can just add to my resume.”

Otto’s eyebrows unknit and his eyes soften. “Do you need to talk to someone? Who was it we worked with at the foundation for people coming from war zones — a trauma counselor?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Carrie brushes him off. Yes, she should talk to someone, but she needs an MD with a prescription pad. 

“I fail all the time,” she continues. “One of my assets got his throat slit in Amsterdam because he was working with me! And Quinn —”

She cuts herself off suddenly, not wanting to even finish her thought. She’s not ready to talk about Quinn yet. She takes a few deep breaths to pull herself together. ”But you just go around hyping me up to anyone who’ll talk with you, and Saul thinks I’m the best person to start a new unit at the agency, and it’s too much for me.”

“You’re comparing me to Saul right now?” Otto’s distaste is evident, and Carrie wishes she knew more about what they argued about in Berlin.

“Didn’t you hear anything else I said?” Her voice breaks, and it’s embarrassing. “I feel paralyzed right now. It’s too much pressure.” 

“Okay, okay,” he tries to comfort her. “I understand.”

“So you’ll let me figure out what I’m doing all on my own?” 

“I want to —” He breaks off when he sees her glare. “Yes. You’re all on your own now. But if you need my help, to set up meetings, I’m here.” 

“That’s all I’m asking for.” After a pause, she adds, “Thank you.”

Later, once the lights are off and the room is illuminated only by the streetlamps outside, he bends her over the bed and fucks her hard, the way she always wants but he usually resists, prefers to see her face instead. He covers her mouth with his hand to muffle her moans, the other hand anchoring her hips, and she bites down on his finger when she cums, her body shuddering somewhere on the border between pain and pleasure, the way she always wants.

+++++

As the leaves start to change colors and she finally sees her psychiatrist to tweak her medication dosage, Carrie feels her energy start to come back. She’s been feeling a pull towards New York City for awhile, and once she hears that Quinn is being transferred from Berlin to the VA treatment center in Brooklyn, her decision is made for her. She can’t leave him all alone in that hospital. Not again.

So she starts her job hunt and finds Reda Hashem, a CUNY law school professor who is looking for funding for a practice to defend wrongly accused Muslims being held in the Southern District of New York. She’s never heard of him, or anyone he’s defended in the past, but she likes the idea of doing something under the radar for a change. Reda doesn’t work at the Brennan Center, he doesn’t make a fat NYU salary, and from all his writing online, he seems to genuinely care about the work. 

Carrie sends him an email late one night and they talk on the phone the next morning. When she hangs up, she gets a sudden rush when she realizes that he reminds her of her younger self. He’s not the idealist she was in college, not by a long shot, but he tells such careful stories about his clients, keeps up with their families, remembers their kids’ names. He has all the human contact she missed so much when she was working for the Düring foundation, which was a little too slick and sterile for her despite their noble mission. He describes working with his counterparts in the DA’s office like he’s recruiting assets. He studies them from afar, finds their weaknesses, puts on a friendly face, and goes in to propose an outrageous course of action: no jail time, probation, a record expunged upon an 18th birthday. 

Reda is generous with her too, offering ways she can contribute to the organization he has in his head, beyond just her useful contacts at government agencies: she knows how FBI investigations are conducted, where evidence could have been missed or misused or tampered with, the political maneuverings of prisoner exchanges that are replicated constantly on a smaller scale. 

And very quickly it’s decided that she’ll move to New York City with Franny, and that Otto will give Reda his first year of funding, though he’s unhappy that Carrie’s position isn’t more high-profile. She feels motivated for the first time in weeks, feels like someone her 22-year-old self would be proud of. 

+++++

Before she packs up all her belongings yet again, before she starts scrolling through StreetEasy to look for a New York apartment, Otto tries to stop her from leaving.

“I don’t think you should take this job.” 

“Well, it’s too late. Reda is counting on me.” He’s been dropping not-so-subtle hints about his displeasure for the past week, and Carrie is tired of it. “And you already promised the funding. You can’t pull out now.”

“I don’t care about the money,” Otto says with a shake of his head, like he’s not even sure why she brought it up. And it’s true, he has so much money that he won’t even notice the loss of a million dollars. “I care about you and your career. You’re not a lawyer. How are you going to be of use to this organization?” 

Carrie rolls her eyes. “I know I’m not a lawyer. But I don’t have to appear in court to be helpful.”

“You could be effective in so many more lasting ways, working with charities all across the world.” 

“Do you understand all of the blatant ways the NYPD discriminates against Muslim men? It’s not just New York, it’s everywhere. Berlin too. In case you haven’t noticed,” she says nastily. 

“And it’s your job to defend men who get charged with a few years’ jail time for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?” 

“That’s important work! These people have no resources!”

“I know it’s important work. But it’s work for other people. Why are you so determined to do this?”

Carrie sighs heavily. She’s been telling herself that it’s a return to the human rights work she wanted to do while she was in college. That’s true enough, and she gets a fresh start without the behemoth CIA behind her. But she’s starting to realize that it’s also penance, for reasons both big and small. For everyone she’s killed, not by her own hand but no less her responsibility, for every time she laughed when someone in Kabul called her the Drone Queen, for forgetting the human cost of an anti-terror, tough-on-crime crackdown that’s been ruining the lives of American Muslims since 9/11.

“You’re never going to talk me out of this job. It’s something I need to do. So that I can atone, I guess.” She softens her statement when she sees Otto’s eyebrows shoot up, and she hates herself for adding the _I guess,_ because it’s something she’s thought about every night for weeks. It just sounds crazy to say it out loud.

“All those hours in church really made an impact,” Otto notes drily, but she can tell he’s relaxed a bit. At least, he understands that she’s not going to blow off Reda and his students just because he disapproves. “Will you at least have dinner with me every time I come to New York?”

Otto is flying back to Berlin in a few days, since the board of the Foundation decided that they need more of his input to continue operations, but he’s assured Carrie that he can be back in the States weekly, if he wants to. The wonders of a private plane.

“I don’t want to have dinner with you if you’re going to lecture me about all the better things I could be doing with my time.” 

“We won’t even talk about work. How’s that? Does that change your mind?”

She hesitates, not sure what she’s being asked to commit to. Otto’s face falls in response.

“Of course it doesn’t,” he says. “I should have known.”

“Should have known what?”

“You’ve been pushing me away since we left Berlin. Before we even went to bed together,” he accuses.

“I’ve never promised anything that I couldn’t give you,” she defends herself.

“You haven’t broken a promise, that’s true. But you don’t open yourself up to me.”

“You sleep in my bed half the time! You eat breakfast with my daughter!”

“You’ve been remarkably generous with Franny,” he allows. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know her. But she’s a child, and she loves everyone who brings her presents. There’s always a part of you locked away that I can’t ever hope to reach. I’m not even sure if you can reach it, either.”

She should have expected this turn, really, since some version of it has been thrown at her by many an ex-lover, but it still feels like a fresh wound every time. She blinks rapidly, her brow furrowing in response. 

“I didn’t know this time together has been such a hardship,” she says. “You were free to leave at any time.” 

“No, I wasn’t! It would never have been that simple.” Carrie’s surprised at how forceful his protest is. “You were just waiting for me to disappear. As if it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy you’ve always had in your head.”

“I don’t _want_ you to leave,” she says, desperate. “But I think I’d be better off alone. I don’t deserve —” 

She stops. 

“Does this have to do with everything you’re atoning for?” Otto asks.

“No.” She shakes her head. “Well, yes, a little bit. But it’s not just about everything that’s gone wrong in my career. It’s dangerous to be around me. I pull people into this deep, dark hole, and I’m tired of it.” 

“Are you talking about Jonas?”

“He acted like I corrupted him. He said there were things he could never unsee or unhear.” 

“Like what?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” she dodges.

“I think it does, actually.” 

“The point is, he’d had enough. And right now, I can’t get into a relationship with anyone else.”

To Otto’s credit, he doesn’t yell, or tell her he’d wasted his time with her the past couple months, but his reaction is almost worse: he just stares at her with such pity in his eyes. 

“Maybe I pushed you too hard,” he allows. “You just got out of a long relationship. Maybe you’ll feel differently in a few months.” 

Carrie sighs. “From your mouth to God’s ears,” she jokes. She has no energy left to fight with him. 

“So I’ll see you in New York?” 

“You’ll see me in New York,” she promises.

In an attempt to make sure Carrie and Franny are taken care of after the move, Otto offers to let them stay in an investment property he just purchased in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn, a brownstone with a backyard. Carrie protests at first, even though she would love to bypass the stress of finding somewhere to live, because it seems like a gift she shouldn't accept from someone who’s interested in her. She suspects her acceptance would mean more than she wants it to. But Otto wears her down, convinces her that it would be sitting empty otherwise, the cost so negligible to him that he wouldn’t bother with the hassle of renting it. To pretend that she can contribute, she insists on furnishing the house herself.

So Carrie entrusts all her boxes to a moving company, most of which are still packed from Berlin, and drives the four hours north with Franny, her breath catching in her throat when she sees the Freedom Tower looming large as she follows signs for the Holland Tunnel.

+++++

You’re late to meet a client, and you’re still getting used to the subway, and you thought you could easily switch train lines at Penn Station, but you’ve been up and down two flights of stairs without hitting another platform. It’s the tail end of morning rush hour and there are people all around you, like there are everywhere you turn in this city. They’re all moving in streams, like there are invisible lane dividers, signs that everyone can see except for you. You want to stop to get your bearings, but you’ll get run over if you try that now, so you force yourself to breathe evenly as you remind yourself that you’re just going to a meeting. You can be late, and it isn’t life or death, and you don’t have to check for threats in the bowels of this crumbling train station. That isn't your job anymore.

You exhale as you find the arrows pointing towards the local train and fall into line with everyone else heading in that direction, your cold sweat drying as the memory of the last time you were lost in a train station fades.

You were worried about starting over in New York, since your last attempt in Berlin imploded so terrifically. Manhattan is home to ghosts you can’t ever expel, the open chasm of the 9/11 memorial an apt metaphor for everything you missed during the weeks leading up to it. But you’re here, and you feel insulated by the masses of people rather than crushed, and you can feel whispers of Brody even in the most unexpected places. You welcome those whispers, finally, and feel a weight lifted off of you. Maybe you’ll be ready to talk about him someday soon.

You’re carving out a life for yourself and for Franny, and you feel useful and productive at work. You can’t save everyone, that’s true, but you feel the constant gratitude of the people you have helped, with welcome-home parties and crying parents, and you feel settled, even as you wedge yourself deep into a crowded subway car.

**Author's Note:**

> Me to myself: God it’s so depressing to keep writing about Carrie in relationships that end badly  
> Also me: Yeah how the fuck do you think Carrie (a real person) feels?


End file.
